“Why is the female lead [on TV] always silly and sweet, while the supporting female is always a manipulative bastard?” Xia Meng, vice president of an internet television company, rails at the computer as she watches an online series in a conference room. On Xia’s screen, the leading actress is bullied by her female colleague before her (male) boss comes to help her. “Is the leading lady only able to retaliate against this bully because she knows a powerful boss?”

This is the scene in which new TV series Delicious Romance goes fully meta, knowing its audience is tired of the cliché plots of many female-oriented dramas in the Chinese mainland. But even when it doesn’t lean on the fourth wall, the series, which is rated 8.4 out of 10 points on reviewing platform Douban and has been dubbed a Chinese Sex and the City (despite its corny name), pokes fun at the stereotype of “傻白甜 (silly, innocent, and sweet)” that permeates the characterization of female leads in urban dramas.

Directed by Taiwan’s Leste Chen and Hsu Chao Jen, the series tells the coming-of-age story of three urban women with totally different personalities after experiencing hardships in career, life, and love during the Covid-19 pandemic. Far from the stereotyped image of being unbelievably naïve and lucky, or extremely pretentious and noble, the three women in Delicious Romance have their own charm and character defects that viewers have deemed to be closer to reality.

Fang Xin (Zhang Hanyun) is a gorgeous former housewife who returns to the workplace after divorcing her unfaithful husband. Xia Meng (Wang Ju) is a corporate powerhouse who makes her boyfriend feel insecure because of her outstanding abilities. Liu Jing (Li Chun) is a perfectionist food blogger who is picky about both dining and love.

These are women who are not put up on a pedestal, but saturated with the flaws of everyday life. Fang Xin chooses, slightly selfishly, to expose the true colors of another woman to her boyfriend, knowing full well this will hurt the woman. Despite her outstanding career, Xia Meng repeatedly lies about her abilities to Lu Bing, her new boyfriend, out of fear he would feel bad knowing she is richer and more successful than him.

Far from being dealbreakers, these flaws seem to have made the characters more lovable and relatable to viewers. “It is what people are really like. No one is perfect, but what is important is whether they reflect on themselves and make changes, which has also been shown in the drama in a lighthearted way,” Zhang Di, a viewer in Anhui, tells TWOC.

Delicious Romance’s achievements are all the more impressive as a small-budget drama without a star-studded cast or extensive publicity. Gaining popularity mainly by word of mouth, it has beaten similar female-centric urban dramas in Douban ratings such 2020’s Nothing But Thirty, which has 6.6 points, 2017’s The First Half of My Life, with 6.4 points, and 2016’s Ode to Joy, whose first season has 7.4 points. Viewers heaped high praise on it on Weibo, commenting that they had binge-watched 10 episodes in one go.

The series captures a great deal of dilemmas experienced by today’s women: tremendous pressure from parents to get married, anxiety over body image, sexism, and harassment in the workplace, and criticism of being too strong and independent. “I feel the pain suffered by Liu when she is denied employment on the grounds of being aged and single,” a viewer, Chen Xin, tells TWOC.